Letter: Congress to blame for country's immigration woes and banking failures
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Two front page articles in the March 15 edition of The Daily Record highlight unrelated problems in our country that are both the fault of Congress.
In “'More needs to be done',” Haroldo Nunes, director of Open Arms Hispanic Ministry in Orrville, described our immigration system as “broken." Since the last major immigration legislation in 1986, a politically contradictory mishmash of modifications has created a complex naturalization process that can take forever.
Both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal have reported on Indian immigrants who were brought here legally as children and were raised here. The U.S.A. is their only home, but due to immigration laws and an overloaded citizenship application process, they face self-deportation after they turn 21.
Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump tried unsuccessfully to force Congress to fix our immigration mess. Congress did nothing, yet members of Congress routinely, and successfully, add unrelated riders to bills to satisfy their special interest groups.
Congress is also the culprit in the recent bank failures addressed in the article “How safe are Ohio banks?” Misguided bipartisan legislation that loosened requirements on lenders and borrowers in the mid-1990s led to the financial crisis of 2008 (this is documented in the book “Reckless Endangerment” by Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner).
Instead of undoing the faulty legislation (as suggested by Sen. Elizabeth Warren), Congress added more complexity with the Dodd-Frank Act.
More recently, Congress has taken a hands-off approach to the crypto industry. The failed banks had business models oriented toward tech, crypto and real estate. Silicon Valley Bank, which had invested deposits in long-term bonds, some risky, was not subject to Dodd-Frank.
Congress, through its action and inaction, is responsible for many of the pressing problems that threaten our democracy.
Jim Jicha, Wooster
This article originally appeared on The Daily Record: Congress to blame for country's immigration woes and banking failures
